It was the last thing I saw before I passed out.
I later learned that I’d hit the ground so hard that my femur—the largest bone in my body—had snapped like a piece of dry kindling at a force of fifteen times my body weight. I’d also severely fractured my skull. Passersby spoke afterward about a large pool of dark crimson blood where my head had made contact with the ice, followed by a slick forty-foot trail of red that led to my limp body.
Shortly after the accident, a Killington ski patrol came across the horrific scene. They hastily radioed a medic who came to my aid on the hill. I was placed on a cloth sled and hooked to the back of a snowmobile.
I came to as I slid along the frozen snow on the way down the massive mountain. I felt helpless, bundled like a cocoon in a flimsy sled as I hurtled over the bumpy ice behind the roaring snowmobile. Trees and skiers passed in a surreal blur.
“We’ve got a severe trauma incident here,” the patrolman said into his radio as we sped down the hill. “You’d better call University Medical and have them prep an ICU bed.”
It felt like it took forever to reach the base of the mountain. I was loaded into an ambulance and rushed to the University of Vermont Medical Center.
As we drove, bursts of light blasted through my closed eyelids. Thoughts rolled through my head:
How could this have happened?
Why did this happen to me?
I want to see my parents.
Where is my family?
Take a breath. You will get through this.
But unlike other accidents I’d been in, I couldn’t expect to see my family anytime soon. I was four hours away from home. Although I’d taken a bus to the mountain with friends, they’d had to catch the bus home without me.
I was alone.
When I arrived at the hospital, I was given the option to call my parents.
I pondered this. Although I needed them, I knew how my mother was going to react. She was going to be terrified. I didn’t want to put her through this.
But I had no choice.
With the phone up to my ear, I strained to get the words out of my mouth. “Mom…”
I didn’t know that the doctors had already told her about the accident.
“Mom, I fell skiing,” I whispered. “My leg is broken.”
My mom began to sob.
Everything went black. With my traumatic head injury, the consciousness came and went in waves.
To this day, I only remember slivers of the snowmobile pulling me down the mountain, the whirring of the ambulance siren, and bits and pieces of the emergency room.
One thing I will never forget, though, was the fear in my mother’s voice during that phone call. There was nothing I could say to relieve her terror or worry from her son being admitted to the intensive care unit hours away from his family.
When I faded back in, I tried to reassure her. “Don’t worry, Mom, everything is going to be okay,” I said. “Please don’t cry. I love you.” And then I fell back into unconsciousness again.
My stay at the hospital was cloudy, with only slivers of memory. I remember being slid into the cold, confined MRI machine. I remember the sheer and unrelenting pain of waking up in traction with my leg hanging down from the ceiling. But most of all, I distinctly remember being handed a small, round pink pill.
Just moments before, a short nurse with curly brown hair came in to check my vitals. She read my temperature and pulse and checked on my respiration and blood pressure.
Then she asked, “Honey, are you feeling any pain right now?”
I’d been here before. “Yes!” I was writhing in anguish.
“How much pain, on a scale of one to ten?”
“Ten!” I screamed in agony. “Please help me. Please!”
Five minutes later she was back with the doctor. She handed me a small plastic cup with a pill in it—a 20mg dose of OxyContin.
I gulped it down as if it were the first thing I’d eaten in years.
All the pain faded away…
I woke up hours later in a recovery room. My father sat in a chair beside me. He had traveled all night to get to the hospital. While I’d been asleep, the doctors had performed an emergency surgery to repair my leg. They had made two small incisions, one on my hip and one near my knee, and inserted a titanium rod inside my femoral bone. The rod was then secured with two screws. The bleeding in my brain and the swelling had subsided.
I lay there and looked at my dad. He looked back at me. There was nothing to say.
I was alive.
“Hey, buddy,” he finally said. He reached over and put his hand on my shoulder.
I started to cry. I couldn’t tell if it was from the pain or from my dad’s comforting touch during my time of need.
My head ached and my leg burned in agony. Due to my overwhelming pain, the doctors again opted to put me on a self-managed morphine drip. Any time I felt the slightest discomfort, pain, or anxiety, I would push the button.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
And the pain would go away.
eight
2001
U.S. opioid deaths: 9,496
I spent a week at the hospital in Vermont before I was able to come home. When I arrived back, I entered an intensive rehabilitation program. There was no cast, but I had to use crutches to get around. Just like with my basketball accident, I missed weeks of school to recover at home. I was unable to walk on my left leg for months. As serious as the injury was, it did little to change my partying ways.
In January 2001, I celebrated my sixteenth birthday. I was finally moving around well enough to go back to school. Another traumatic event had tested me and my family. The stress was tangible. But with hard work and dedication, we got through it. It wasn’t long before my social life recovered, as did the pot dealing and poor decisions that came along with it. By now, I was taking full advantage of the fact that my parents were divorced and my dad wasn’t home. My mother was losing the ability to control her growing son. I was starting to make my own choices, many of them foolish.
My junior year of high school wasn’t much different than the year before. There were parties every weekend. Everyone I knew was smoking weed and drinking.
My drug sales continued to grow at a rapid pace. My desire to hang out with friends and party on the weekends paled in comparison to my fervor for selling. While everyone else partied, I kept to myself, bagging up, meeting other dealers, counting money.
Many drug dealers were infamous for their big heads and cocky attitudes, and I was no exception. While everyone else partied, got fucked up, and spent money on drugs, I was the guy who made out. I made the money. I had the girls. I had the power.
My ego became a gift and a curse. It gave me confidence in business transactions and social situations. It also gave me a feeling of invincibility during moments of conflict or indecision, which could be dangerous.
As months passed, my reputation for being a successful dealer continued to flourish.
One day, Jared’s connect, John, approached me. We bantered for a bit. Then he leaned in and lowered his voice. “I just want you to know that you don’t gotta go through Jared no more. Just call me. I got whatever you need, bro.”
John had been Jared’s connect since Jared got his initial start. John was one of the big shots in Milford. He brought in hundreds of pounds annually through connects in Canada and upstate New York. I’d heard stories of the beefs he’d had with other dealers, and the resulting violence. He’d dropped out of college intentionally. He wasn’t selling weed to make a few bucks to supplement a job. Selling weed was his job, and he did it very well.